I Am (Not) I
by Xairathan
Summary: She knows what a reflection is, but she doesn't know why hers is smiling back at her, or how the SDAT player has found its way into her hands.


I Am (Not) I

The plastic casing clatters hollowly against the red soil. The nameless one stares down at it curiously, hesitates a beat. She wonders why her male counterpart dropped it, and why he has not come back to pick it up. The blue-haired girl glances up: the other pilot is being slowly dragged away by one of WILLE's, leaving a trail of uneven footprints in their wake. They show no sign of stopping or turning around, and the nameless one knows her best chance of survival is going with them, even if one is the enemy and the other one doesn't recognize her.

_Is she really the enemy? _she wonders, surveying the German girl from afar. Still she remembers the words shouted at her: "What do _you _want to do?" She is separated from NERV. Her Eva is gone. She realizes for the first time that she has no orders left to follow, and thus, nothing to live for. Would it be so bad to stay out in this red wilderness, as blanked and unmarked as she, and vanish there?

Her eyes trace the trail of footprints down the crimson slopes and come to rest again on the SDAT player. _This place is not unmarked. Nor are you. _The thought comes suddenly, almost as if it is not hers, and with it an impulse to reach down and seize the SDAT and go after the other two pilots. Slowly she bends at the knees and closes the fingers of both hands around the device. She brings it up, the black plastic shining between her palms, clumps of rust-colored dirt stuck to the fingertips of her plugsuit. She can just make out her reflection on the small rectangle, but the light has twisted it into the image of herself wearing a white plugsuit, and a small smile seems to grace her reflection's face. _Wrong. _She has never smiled once in her short life.

_You are another one, _a voice in her head remarks. _You, too, have met Ikari. _

_Who are you? Are you me?_

_I am similar to you. I am I. _

_Rei Ayanami. _The name is but another mark of her existence, one that she has come to learn that she does not deserve. She flinches at the reply.

_Yes. _

The alien landscape twists in on itself as the moon above loses the markings scarring its surface. The endless red recedes a distance away, leaving beige grains behind that dig into the soles of her feet through the plugsuit. The red rushes toward her in a small wave and loses its momentum where the newly-birthed sea meets damp sands.

Standing on the sunlit beach with her toes dug into the sand and blood-colored water lapping at her feet is an image of her, or perhaps it is the other way around: she is the image, and the one she sees before her is the stencil. The other her- Rei Ayanami- has her back turned away from the ocean; she stares up at the silvery moon, now a respectable distance away in the sky. The one clad in black takes a few hesitant steps toward her counterpart.

Over the sound of the passing waves she hears Ayanami speak: "This is how things looked before I left," she remarks with a surprisingly casual tone. "I am told the seas used to be blue, but I cannot imagine it no matter how hard I try. I think it would be beautiful, like their eyes."

The darker of the two does not respond. Instead she draws even with Ayanami and glances over her, taking in all their similarities and differences with eyes too weary to belong to someone as she. They both have the same build, the same haircut, they both hold themselves in the same way, and the only things that could distinguish one from the other are their monochrome plugsuits and the blissful expression on Ayanami's face. _She _has never had reason to feel happiness.

"You are wondering how I am here," Ayanami says flatly. "What to do with yourself. Am I correct?" The other nods, the jerky motion of a child. Ayanami sighs peacefully and turns to face her replica, meeting her gaze. "Do you know how I came to be here?"

"Ikari-kun saved you from the 10th angel," the other Rei recites, barely audible over the sounds of the ocean. "In doing so, he drew your soul out through the only medium possible, the core of Unit-01. But no process was able to retrieve you from Unit-01, and it was sealed away until only recently." She pauses. "How did you awaken?"

Ayanami eyes her with some form of- is it approval?- before glancing up at the moon once more. "You are correct that Ikari drew me out, but it was not through Unit-01's core. Instead my soul came to him in the form of his SDAT player. When Unit-01 was sealed, I was put to sleep alongside it. Kaworu Nagisa awakened me when he fixed it for Ikari."

_And now you're here. _The sea all but reverberates with the statement. The second of the pair stares out over it, over the crimson liquid that she realizes is void of life, and wonders how she knows this. The silence between them continues, almost burning at her skin. By contrast, Ayanami seems to be quite enjoying it, almost like she could wait another 14 years for the conversation to resume. To her, who cannot begin to fathom 14 years of quiet in which no commands are given, it is a challenge. She must learn to speak for herself.

"Why have you brought me here?"

"You do not know who you are. Ikari has exacerbated this. Shikinami has asked what you want to do, but you do not know how to react. I wanted to offer you the chance to become one with me. I want to return. You want a purpose. Both of us would achieve our goals."

_She's not Ayanami anyway. _The anguished declaration still echoes faintly in the back of her mind, howling in time with the pounding of the ocean. This would be an easy solution to her problems- _perhaps Ikari-kun will like me then- _yet she cannot bring herself to voice her approval.

"Who would I be if we merged?"

"We would be one another, and neither of us would be. A new Rei Ayanami would be born into your body, one with both our memories."

"And what of our... concerns?"

Ayanami shrugs. "I do not know. We would not know until we had merged, and then we might not be able to recognize our own worries. It is a chance we would have to be willing to take."

The hissing of the sea spray fades. The rippling around Ayanami's feet slows, stops, and the sand and pebbles hidden underwater slip into a stark clarity. The darker of the pair inhales shallowly and all too frequently, trying to fill her lungs as much as the sudden silence. Then, out of the quiet, there comes a hushed roaring, high like Ayanami's soft tones and yet deep as the cry of an Evangelion. The lighter one lowers her gaze to the horizon, where a line of red has risen into prominence. "Ah. My time must be shorter than I thought," she remarks. "I can only hold you here for so long. You should make your decision soon."

Should. She has been wary of that word since it was first applied to her by that bespectacled WILLE pilot. She despises the implications, a word that could so easily be interpreted as an order, but is not. She wants to tell the other her this, that she craves her own purpose yet has seen the consequences of blindly following along. That the cold hand of uncertainty that she has only felt once before, at the feet of Lilith's cross, is what stops her from answering. Yet looking at Ayanami's face, at the small, unceasing smile, it becomes obvious that she knows, and that is part of why she drew them together in the first place.

The line of red grows taller, closer, and she realizes it is a wall of water, coming to sweep her back into harsh reality. Looking around, she sees nothing but beach and ocean; there is no escape. Turning back to Ayanami she asks, "What will happen to you if I refuse?"

Ayanami shrugs, a slight lift of her shoulders. "I can wait. It is one of the things Nagisa told me to expect."

"Ikari-kun will likely not accept me as you even if we return together."

"That is correct."

"And if we return together, neither of us will be who he has grown accustomed to."

"Why must everything be about him?" asks Ayanami, and her double stiffens. "Have you ever done something for yourself? Something you enjoyed?" The screaming of the water increases in intensity, and Ayanami has to shout to make herself heard. "Did you ever wonder what those books were for or where they came from? When Shikinami yelled at you, was that the first time you ever acted for yourself? Who do you want to be?"

The giant wave continues to close in on the beach, the noise of water streaming down in gallons erasing anything that might be said. Ayanami is still standing, unfazed by the violent rumbling that the other Rei feels building in her bones. The words come unbidden to her lips, an echo of the other's declaration, yet they feel so right, as if some other her in another time shouted them at the heart of the world. "I am I." She repeats the words, reassuring herself: "I am I." And Ayanami, despite it being impossible to hear her double's declaration, smiles even more.

The wave has almost reached the shore, and it leaves no time for prolonged farewell. The black-clad Rei steps for the first time into the sea, sinking up to her thighs in the red liquid. It feels warm, welcoming, unlike the LCL she has become accustomed to. She glances back at Ayanami and mouths 'goodbye' at her, and in the back of her mind she hears her own quiet voice whisper, 'You should really try smiling once you get back'.

She turns to face the wall of water, as tall as an Eva, head on. She spreads her arms wide, resisting the impulse to close her eyes against the relentless spray. With a final, angry howl the wave rushes forth, and white foam paler than skin fills her vision. Her lungs burn, a familiar feeling, as the force of the collision drags her down to the depths. She notes the sudden absence of Ayanami, as if the water has chilled- then the red and white fade to black, and she feels nothing at all.

For a time, it is dark, and though it is cold it could be better. She becomes aware of a small breeze, ruffling the hair near her ear; opposite that there is a sensation of mild discomfort where something is digging into her cheek. Crimson eyes crack open and survey the sideways landscape. She is lying on her side, SDAT player still clutched between her hands. The earth is red once again, and the crossed moon hangs overhead, almost uncomfortably close. Gently removing one hand from the SDAT player, the blue-haired girl pushes herself into a sitting position. She notes that the other two pilots have not gone far while she was talking to Ayanami. In fact, it feels like no time has passed at all.

_I am I¸ _she thinks. _What do I want to do? _

A minute later, a third set of tracks appears in the red dirt as the last of the pilots runs to catch up to the others.

Asuka is in the middle of another scathing tirade when she hears the crunch of soles on earth that is not of her making. She spins around, Shinji flopping around with her. Two sets of blue eyes stare back into one of red. Asuka pauses. "You're the pilot from before," she says, coming to a realization. Her eyes narrow. "From an early lot of the Ayanami types, are you?"

"I am I," says the girl who looks like Ayanami, but is not. She holds out Shinji's old SDAT player. Neither of the other pilots move to take it.

"You're just as weird as she was," mutters Asuka. "Come on. We'll go someplace where the Lilin can pick us up."

The third pilot falls in step alongside the ones clad in red and white, silently putting one foot in front of the other. _Act for yourself, _she recalls. She turns to Asuka, hesitates for a few steps, and says, "Thank you."

The German almost trips over herself in surprise. Even so, the tense slant of her shoulders lessens somewhat, and she dares chance a quick grin. "Perhaps there's hope for you yet," she replies.

Far behind Asuka and Shinji there is a flicker of white, so sudden as if to be an apparition of times long past. _You should try smiling when you get back. _

_Yes, that's right. _And so, she does.


End file.
